Bee Package Installation In Brian’s Rooftop Hive Squill After I installed the bees into Willow, it was Brian’s turn to install his first package of honeybees. It was hard for me to stand back and let him do it, knowing … Continue reading →

Installing Package Bees into Willow Hive On Saturday after picking up our three bee packages, Brian and I set out to install them. First we got the roof ready for the new hives. The roof is black and can get … Continue reading →

The above average March temperatures allowed me to perform an early spring hive inspection of my overwintered colony. With temperatures above average all winter, and 10-20 degrees above average for the past week, the flowers in the area have started … Continue reading →

It’s almost one month later and the bees are still well fed. It’s January, but the temperature is above 50 degrees F today, a perfect opportunity to check on my bees and the state of the candy board. The bees … Continue reading →

Bees On A Roof In A Hurricane And weathering the storm just fine. The girls were out flying in the storm, surfing the wind and dodging the rain. The oncoming hurricane didn’t seem to bother them at all. That’s no … Continue reading →

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Interesting Facts About Bees

It takes 12 bees their entire lifetime to make just one teaspoon of honey.

Honey bees visit 2 million flowers to make one pound of honey

Field bees visit 50 to 100 flowers during each trip.

Honey bees fly 12 and 15 miles per hour.

Honey bees flap their wings 12,000 times per minute.

Honey bees are covered in hairs designed to trap pollen. Even their eyes have hair on them! As they collect pollen for their hive the bees bodies transfer it from flower to flower and that's how pollination occurs.

Honey is essentially dehydrated nectar from flowers. Bees eat honey and pollen from flowers. They ferment the pollen first and mix it with honey in order to be able to digest it.

One honey bee hive visits about 225,000 flowers per day.

A strong hive may contain up to 60,000 honey bees.

All the worker bees are female. The drones or male bees have only one job and that is to mate with the queen. The drone mates one time then he dies.

The queen bee can mate with up to 45 drones. But the average number is 13.

The queen goes on a mating flight several days after she emerges. Once a queen bee is mated, she keeps the drone's sperm alive inside her for the rest of her life. She never mates again.

A queen bee lays up to 2000 eggs a day (an average of one every 45 seconds) and may lay a million eggs in her entire lifetime.

The queen bee decides to lay a fertilized egg which will be a worker bee or new queen or an unfertilized egg which will develop into a drone.